If we don’t raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2, for the first time in our history, the United States will default on its debts and will be unable to pay our bills.Congress has raised the debt ceiling scores of time, including 10 times over the last decade, under both Democratic and Republican leadership. Raising the debt ceiling simply gives our country the ability to pay debts that the nation has already racked up.

Republicans in Washington got us into this mess with two unpaid-for wars and millionaire tax giveaways:

3 out of every 4 dollars of our nation’s debt are the result of Republican policies.

Defaulting on our debt would be catastrophic:

Half a million Americans would lose their jobs. Why? Interest rates would rise on mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit cards and small business loans.

We wouldn’t be able to pay our men and women fighting overseas.

It would force us to stop sending Social Security and Medicare checks, putting millions of America’s seniors at risk.

The United States would lose its perfect credit rating – adding billions to our deficit because investors would charge us more interest on our loans.

The stock market will plummet and mortgage rates will rise – for an American family, this could mean losing thousands from retirement savings and adding thousands to a mortgage.

Threatening to wreck our economic future and throw millions more Americans out of work – all to protect tax breaks for millionaires and corporations – is no way to lead.

Republicans in Congress are holding the debt ceiling vote hostage to get their way on a range of unrelated issues. They are using the debt ceiling vote to try to force draconian cuts to federal programs that Americans rely on, such as Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and Pell student grants that enable students of modest means to afford college. They want to make deep cuts in funding to federal agencies that protect American workers and families, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They want to try to force passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment that would continue these cuts into the future and hamstring our government’s ability to respond to another economic recession. And they want to make sure that the wealthiest Americans and corporations pay even less in taxes by making it nearly impossible for Congress to raise any taxes.

President Obama is in favor of bringing federal spending into line, but doing so in a way that does not harm seniors and working families. And he favors making the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes.

Congress should vote to raise the debt ceiling before defaulting on Aug. 2. Republicans must stop holding the debt ceiling vote hostage to achieve their goals of protecting billionaires and multinational corporations at the expense of average Americans.

The Republicans latest plan would temporarily extend the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts, but would force us to once again face the threat of default just six months from now.

Six months from now, we all know exactly what will happen. The House will once again hold the economy captive and refuse to avoid another default unless we accept their unbalanced, cuts-only approach that asks nothing of the wealthiest Americans but slashes programs like Medicare.

A short-term debt limit extension is nothing more than a political band-aid that might placate members of Speaker Boehner’s caucus but puts our economy in jeopardy.

Democrats’ plan

The Senate has introduced a plan that makes a $2.7 trillion down payment on deficit reduction and ensures we don’t have to go through this again in six months.Serious deficit reduction will require us to tackle tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform, and the Senate plan sets up a bipartisan process to help us get there.

Americans are fed up with the political posturing and Republicans’ empty rhetoric about the deficit. They know Republican policies during the Bush years created the largest deficit in our history. So their alarmist talk about deficits is hollow.

Republicans in Congress should step up and do their job, reach a bipartisan agreement and protect America’s economic future through an extension of the debt ceiling. We can solve our budget problems right now by making billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.